OPINION: Don’t be conned by the Con-Con
We are of different parties and often disagree, but are allied in our fierce devotion to America’s Constitution. It is now under serious threat from well-meaning people who seek a Constitutional Convention.
There are two ways to alter the U.S. Constitution. The first — and only way our Constitution has ever been amended in its 237-year history — is for Congress to propose an amendment and pass it by a two-thirds vote. Then three-fourths of the states must ratify. Everybody sees the amendment language, and knows exactly what they’re voting on.
But there’s another untested way to alter the Constitution. A Constitutional Convention, or “Con-Con,” can be requested by two-thirds of the state legislatures. There has only been one such Convention — when the Constitution was written in 1787. Unlike the amendment approach, a Con-Con opens up the whole Constitution to be re-written as the delegates decide. Alterations could not be reliably limited to a particular, known proposal; delegates could concoct changes on the fly to anything or everything. There are no set rules determining how the delegates holding such staggering power would be chosen. We would be counting on a dysfunctional Congress to set these rules.
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